Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Creating high-quality products and services, and offering them at competitive prices may not be enough to ensure business success in the 21st century marketplace. Tomorrow’s most successful enterprises will be those that also embrace social responsibility, according to Dr. Bruce Piasecki, an expert on corporate strategy.

In his new book, The Surprising Solution: Creating Possibility in a Swift and Severe World, Bruce, a long-time PCG client and friend who has studied the subject for more than 25 years, says the world’s largest multinational corporations are more powerful than most nations. In fact, he reports, more than half of the world’s 100 largest economies are corporations, not nations.

Hence, corporate giants will play a greater role in solving critical social problems like climate change, energy security, health care and poverty through innovation and response to social market forces. Those that do it best, he says, are the ones that will enjoy the greatest success.

Some multinationals are already stepping forward to address some of our most pressing problems, and are scoring big in the marketplace, he notes. General Electric, for example, is spending billions to develop wind power and other green technologies as part of its “Ecomagination” campaign. Toyota pioneered the efficient hybrid power train and is now the world’s largest auto maker. And Walmart, the behemoth that serves more than 175 million customers each week, is implementing a sustainability program focusing on such things as reduced packaging and more efficient transportation, not only for its 7,400 stores worldwide but for its entire supply chain as well.

We believe that Bruce – who also wrote In Search of Environmental Excellence and Corporate Environmental Strategy (for which our founding partners wrote the introduction – has made another important contribution to our understanding of the role of corporations in an environmentally sensitive world. Check it out.